When you hire a financial advisory firm, you have some expectations from them on how you can save, invest and grow your hard-earned cash. The financial adviser ought to be professional, independent and supply sound financial information. In the event you haven’t hired a fee-only financial advisor, then you may not get exactly what you signed up for.
You will find more than 200,000 financial advisors in the United States and this number is forecast to increase in the next several years. But of these, only about 2,000 are fee-only and are registered with the Personal Financial Advisors Association. Transaction-based financial advisers make their money from commissions which they make from selling financial products. But, fee-only advisory firms do not work on commissions as they don’t sell any products. Rather, they charge their customers a flat fee for the independent financial advisory services they supply rather from the investments they recommend.
Most of the financial advisory businesses are commission-based which indicates that their revenue is linked directly to the investments and financial products they sell to you. These firms might call themselves financial advisors but they are majorly interested in promoting their merchandise. Thus, they might recommend some financial products more highly than others as they want to earn a commission from them. Hence, it is relatively tricky for you to examine whether the investment portfolio they have suggested is most acceptable for your portfolio.
On the other hand, fee-only advisory businesses like Financial Fiduciaries LLC do not sell any financial products and thus don’t earn any commissions. Therefore, customers know that fee-only advisers work to their best interests and aren’t connected to any investment product or business. As a result of this, they give impartial and independent investment, and they do not have any conflict of interest. They might freely recommend products and investments which are most suited to their clients.
But, watch out for companies that use fee-based instead of fee-only as these two aren’t similar. Fee-based financial advisors collect both commissions and fees, and they might also recommend some products endorsed by the companies that sponsor them.
A fiduciary is a professional in the financial field who is held out in trust and has the legal responsibility to set the interests of their customers above their own. Fee-only financial experts like Thomas Batterman are the only financial experts that work under a suitability standard. The state and federal regulators respect fee-only financial advisers highly that provides you more reasons to select fee-only financial advisory companies.
Prior to picking a financial advisory company, do some due diligence and research on it. Ask numerous questions before you enter into a professional relationship with a financial advisory business.